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Tax hikes versus entitlement cuts

Barack Obama will go before the American people this morning and declare that he wants taxes raised to the tune of $1.5 trillion. Those tax hikes will target upper-income Americans, not the middle class, as part of a larger deficit reduction package.

The proposal may bring smiles to the faces of liberals who have been frustrated at Obama’s unwillingness to fight for progressive tax priorities. It’ll also give Obama a chance at winning the trust of fiscally conservative independent voters.

In the big picture, Obama’s proposal lays the groundwork for a 2012 campaign fought over a sharply defined and massive disagreement on how to solve the country’s debt problem.

Notably absent from Obama’s proposal is any large-scale effort to reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. That’s a telling omission in a proposal aimed at claiming the mantle of fiscal responsibility.

But by largely omitting entitlements from his deficit plan, the president will be able to go into the 2012 campaign as the candidate who will raise taxes on some Americans, but won’t meddle with Social Security and Medicare.

Obama’s leading Republican challenger at the moment – Rick Perry – is a candidate who won’t raise taxes, but calls Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” of dubious constitutionality, and has floated dramatic measures to overhaul entitlement programs.

It is said that Americans want more government than they care to pay for. Thanks to the president’s proposals today, the 2012 race looks more than ever like a polarized contest between a Democrat who aims to pay for the government Americans want, and a Republican who aims to cut the government Americans don’t want to pay for.

Readers' Comments (11)

It is said that Americans want more government than they care to pay for.

Who is saying that Alex?

Some may be saying that, the ones the President is catering to, but the majority of Americans want a government they can afford to pay for, not one they are forced to pay for.

Given the ground work the President and his town criers are laying out for the 2012 elections, it's clear more class warfare is in store, and the strategy of division will be the battle cry.

After 3 years of pitting one group against another, it's clear this President has little interest in rallying people together, but rather relishes the idea of tearing them apart to craft his vision of the future.

"t’ll also give Obama a chance at winning the trust of fiscally conservative independent voters. ".....................Fiscally conservative voters, whether you characterize them as independent or not, will not throw their trust to anybody offering a mammoth tax increase in the face of a faltering economy. That you can state such a thing is indicative of the nature of the problem Obama and the left represents. Namely, you don't know what in the hell you're talking about.

I have never heard this said as simply or as well. Class war at its best.

The folks who are getting the free stuff don't like the folks who are paying for the free stuff,

because the folks who are paying for the free stuff can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff.

And, the folks who are paying for the free stuff want the free stuff to stop.

And the folks who are getting the free stuff want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting!

Now... the people who are forcing the people who pay for the free stuff have told the people who are RECEIVING the free stuff that the people who are PAYING for the free stuff are being mean, prejudiced, and racist.

So... the people who are GETTING the free stuff have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff by the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free stuff

and giving them the free stuff in the first place.

We have let the free stuff giving go on for so long that there are now more people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff.

Now understand this. All great democracies have committed financial suicide somewhere between 200 and 250 years after being founded. The reason?

The voters figured out they could vote themselves money from the treasury by electing

people who promised to give them money from the treasury in exchange for electing them.

The United States officially became a Republic in 1776, 231 years ago. The number of people now getting free stuff outnumbers the people paying for the free stuff. We have one chance to change that in 2012. Failure to change that spells the end of the United States as we know it.

The greatest concern for Americans should be that a rather large sampling of U.S.-based corporations shows that highly profitable companies like GE are paying their CEOs far more than they are remitting in Federal corporate taxes as shown here:

GetinLINE_TB: "Time to take sides THE WORKING MEN AND WOMEN OF AMERICA or Corporate outsourcers , War profiteers, and Paris Hiltons"..................How about the working folks of this country or the marxists, anarchists, unions, and DNC? Sounds more realistic. Your completely unaware that you're biting off WAY more than you can chew. You're vastly outnumbered, bozo.

Corporate America somehow suckered the conservatives into believing they actually want whats good for them.

This really is all about the ultra rich vs everyone else, but the ultra rich scammed the conservatives into joining their side and making it "the conservatives vs all those liberals".

Worse yet, they even got the conservatives believing that not only should the ultra wealthy and the corporations they own not pay their fair share due to all those jobs they are creating(laugh), but that we instead need to cut entitlements for the needy to pay for everything.